C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary directed by Kevin Willmott. It is a fictional account of an alternate history in which the Confederates won the American Civil War. It's presented in the form of a British documentary on the history of the Confederate States.
I have the movie on tape and wrote the described C.S.A history down in detail. Here it is:
The richest Americans were concentrated in the South. Cotton was America's number one export and that made southerners as well as northern textile mills very wealthy. So cotton was king. By 1860, a young prime field hand would sell for as much as a luxury car would in the late 1950s. American slaves represented more capital than any other asset in the entire nation. America was always a slave-based economy.
War and Rebellion
By January of 1861, most people in the American South believed the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln would terminate their ownership of black slaves. A provisional government was formed and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected President. In very little time, the Confederacy defined itself as an independent and sovereign nation.
Meanwhile the Union victory at Antietam gave President Lincoln the opportunity to make a revolutionary proclamation, the Emancipation Proclamation. However, the proclamation did not free a single slave. It was purely symbolic and used by Lincoln to frame the war in moral intent. President Davis countered so-called "emancipation" by sending Judah P. Benjamin to negotiate the military and financial involvement of the foreign powers Britain and France. Benjamin, a Jew and the South's most brilliant legal mind, defied anti-Semitic attitudes to become Secretary of State and President Davis's chief advisor.
Benjamin matched Lincoln by wisely promoting the southern cause of state's rights. Not as the preservation of slavery, but as the freedom of private property. Benjamin's gambit worked. Fighting for freedom, not slavery opened the avenue for Europe's entrance into the war. With the assistance of several divisions of British and French troops, Lee's armies at Gettysburg routed the Union forces. In a matter of months, Confederate troops tooked the nation's capitol, capturing the White House - but there was no sign of President Lincoln.
In a small house outside Washington, D.C. on April 9, 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant surrendered to General Robert E. Lee. The bloody conflict had finally ended. It became the primary objective of Confederate forces to locate and arrest the now deposed President Lincoln. Confederate forces were everywhere, so a desperate Lincoln turned to Harriet Tubman. She chose to disguise President Lincoln in black face and travel with him along one of her many secret slave routes. A crack battalion of Confederate troops was dispatched from Detroit to locate and arrest Lincoln and Tubman before they could escape into Canada. Lincoln and Tubman were captured trying to cross Lake Sinclair. President Abraham Lincoln was now a prisoner of the Confederate Army. Jefferson Davis, on learning of Lincoln's capture in black face, termed the arrest "symbolic."
A quick trial was convened and former President Lincoln was convicted of war crimes against the southern nation. He was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe near Norfolk, Virginia. It was from the window of his damp cell that he watched the execution of Harriet Tubman. There were many that were clamoring were Lincoln's execution also, but President Davis understood that sparing Lincoln's life would ease tensions in the North. After serving two years, a frail and gaunt Lincoln was granted a full pardon and exile to Canada. He never returned to his homeland. When he died in 1905, he was lonely and bitter man, disgraced, abandoned, and almost entirely forgotten by history. Today, he's only remembered as the man who lost the War of Northern Aggression.
Reconstruction
The victory of the Confederacy was cause for grand celebrations. Plantations throughout the South were the center of jubilant parties welcoming back the troops, returning them to a now blessed and trimphant way of life. With the stroke of a pen, President Davis annexed the United States. The symbols of the old government were removed and it became the Confederate States of America. Dixie, a former minstrel show tune written ironically by a northerner, replaced the national anthem. President Davis quickly left Richmond and moved the office of the presidency to Washington and the White House. But two problems would follow.
Confederate forces burned and pillaged several northern cities, such as New York City and Boston. The fate of millions of black slaves seemed settled when a surprising call from emancipation arised from Robert E. Lee. He said that, "Virginia and the South as a whole would fare better if she could get rid of negro population. They would be a cause of serious trouble in our attempt to hold them." Lee caused a firestorm of debate over what to do with the post-war slaves. A dashing freshman Congressman from Virginia would take the floor and establish himself as the leader of the pro-slavery position. It is said that John Ambrose Fauntroy could persuade any colleague from his position or charm any woman from her dress.
President Davis, approached the question from a practical point of view. Ironically, it was one of Davis's own slaves, named Poxy, who gave him the notion that would rejuvenate the institution of slavery. The Davis Plan took the form of an income tax designed to rebuild the north. Still, former Unionists did have another option. The entire tax, collected only from former Union citizens, could only be abated for the purchase of household or industrial slaves. To manage the plan, Davis selected Congressman John Ambrose Fauntroy.
Stray blacks, free and slave, children, the elderly, or anyone with dark skin who could not prove Caucasian ancestry were arrested and placed in cattle pens in most major Northern cities. Former southern owner traveled for hundreds of miles to sort through the thousands of black faces and claim their escaped property. Most perplexed about their fate under the plan were those of mixed racial background. A small number of so-called mulatto slave owners existed in South Carolina and other southern states. Formerly called "free men of color", under the Davis Plan, the one-drop statute constituted their inclusion and mixed race slave owners were sold right alongside their slaves. Abolitionists rallied to combat the Davis Plan.
However, northerners began to appreciate what southerners had always known - it's good to be the master. A secret meeting was held in the home of Susan B. Anthony to respond to the success of the Davis Plan. There William Lloyd Garrison read his now famous letter, "Why We Must Leave." About 20,000 whites, mostly northerners, followed Garrison across the border, to Canada. Among the notable expatriots were Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the outspoken Wendell Phillips. Another to leave was the suffragette, Susan B. Anthony. She would lead a women's movement in Canada, gaining the vote for women in 1912.
One particular incident that got the eye of the country was the matter of Cassy Brown in 1875. Cassy was a slave woman who murdered the three white children in her charge and escaped. She was never captured. For the first time, people began to worry, could they trust "their black mammy." Slave owners left befuddled at the behavior of their slaves, turned to Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright of the University of Louisiana. He was a highly respected and widely published member of the American Medical Association. Cartwright considered an expert on "negro diseases and peculiarities", had made a major breakthrough with his discovery of drapetomania. Drapetomania is a disease which causes slaves to run away, it's taken from the Latin drapeto (meaning to flee) and mania (an obsession). Thus, Dr. Cartwright believed drapetomania to be the root cause of all runaways. Amazingly, his research would influence an entire generation of medical thought.
John Ambrose Fauntroy, who many call "the father of modern slavery", received the Democratic presidential nomination in 1880, but suffered a debilitating stroke weeks later. He died in 1882. The Fauntroy family would capture the imagination of the nation for years to come. A political dynasty, many consider the talented family to be American royalty.
Birth of a Nation
While the Davis Plan rebuilt the cities, a psychological reconstruction would be instrumental in giving birth to a new nation. Confederate leaders knew it was necessary to reconstruct the minds of its slaves and citizens. This would be what some call, "The American Holocaust." Reconstruction would see to it that moral authority was reestablished. Many called it "gentle reminder." A great many blacks were lynched during this period. Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison responded to these horrors by organizing fugitive slaves, free blacks, Canadians, and former U.S. citizens into a new organization, the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Chattel People.
A Confederate delegation met with Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald and demanded the immediate return of all "negro property" within the Canadian territory. These were the darkest days since the overturning of emancipation. In the final hour, Frederick Douglas was called before Parliament to speak. The oratory of Douglas swayed the needed votes against deportation. However, the executions and tortures had scared most slaves into submission. Until the very end, unti his death in 1895, Douglas fought against slavery in the former United States.
Confederate reconstruction efforts were curtailed by the ongoing conflict with the Plains Indians. Land hungry pioneers, gold prospectors and expanding railroads that the government wanted to be moved from the South into the Great Plains meant that the Indians had to be removed. They took their children from them. Indian children were forcibly removed and sent to "boarding schools" that were nothing more than total institutions for the eradication of their native heritage and pride. The Plains Indians Wars would last nearly thirty years. By 1890, the last Indian nation had been defeated by the confederate cavalry.
In California, thousands of Chinese immigrants were employed as cheap labor constructing the nations new railroad system. They were caught completely off guard when Congress passed the Yellow Peril Mandate. Government agents simply told West Coast employers that the Chinese workers that they employed, they now owned. What had been cheap labor now became slave labor. One might have thought that the proclamation of that mandate would have effectively halted the influx of workers from Asia, but they kept coming, still believing that jobs and good futures were waiting for them. But that mandate effectively changed the face of West Coast slavery from black to yellow.
Fearfull of further non-white immigration, influential clergyman and author, Reverend Claymore Penn Holmes of New York urged Congress to ensure that the Confederate States would remain a Christian nation. The Christian Reform Act of 1895 outlawed any religion not based on Christianity. After much debate, it was decided that the Catholic Church would be considered Christian, but the Jews would be asked to leave. As Jefferson Davis lay on his death bed, he literally pleaded with Congress to revoke the Act and remined them of the gallant work of the Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin and other Jews who had supported the Confederacy. John Ambrose Fauntroy II, visited Davis and told the former president that the nation would "be better off without those blood sucking Jews." Davis reached out with a frail hand and grabbed Fauntroy by the collar and hissed, "Don't you ever forget sir, that it was a blood sucking Jew who saved this country." The death of Davis did create a provision allowing a small number of Jews to remain on the reservation on Long Island.
While blacks were gaining political support in Canada, in the C.S.A. North/South relations were being romanticized. The once bloody civil war had become civil. Novelist during reconstruction mended the divide between the two regions. In their books, the aims and causes of the war suddenly changed. Slavery was no longer mentioned as the cause of the Civil War. This was key to reconciliation. Thus, the suffering of slaves was ignored. Stories presented only loyal black servants. However, the courage and sacrifice of whites on both sides of the Maxon-Dixon Line was romantically examined. They struggle to survive, they protect their homes and families, generals in battlefields take on a new flare, the smallest details became dramatically important. In best sellers like "My Union Soldier" and "Of Bells and Blue," southerners are taught to pity the North, to cry for the lost cause of the Union, the misguided attempt to free the slaves. Northerners are presented as a valiant people who onced ruled a mighty land that simply lost its way.
A Tropical Empire
With reconstruction complete, the C.S.A., inspired by the empires of Britain and France, were anxious to embark on a journey to become the most powerful empire in the world.
In the summer of 1900, Confederate framers acted on their vision of a lush and productive superstate. They would civilize the savage regions of the Southern Hemisphere. It was called "a splendid little war" but it really became the first opportunity to test North/South unity. The war was a rousing success. With decisive victories against the Spanish in Cuba and in the Caribbean, the expansion continued into Mexico. These Latin American countries as confederate satellites were organized along grand antebellum lines with slave-based plantation economies. Only white people could hold black slaves, but in Mexico the Mexicans themselves were never subjected to slavery as such. There they had a system that was implement which separated the Mexican people from the white Americans who now ruled the country. This system of apartness effectively created two worlds, one white and the other Mexican. Separate and unequal. The system did have the advantage of allowing the Mexicans the convenience of knowing their place and staying in it. Like Britain and France, the Confederate States used existing divisions in South America, overturning democratically elected leaders and seizing power. Brazil turned against Argentina, Chile against Bolivia, and so on. It was simply divide and conquer.
Confederate leadership saw the conquest of South America as its prize piece. Conquering a huge landmass would make it a true empire. The new C.S. leadership in the Latin American countries believed in controlling the stomach as well as the mind. For breakfast, the Latin American diet became grits and sausage. For dinner, hamhocks and collard greens. A sandwich for lunch and a pickled pig's foot. The critical mistake confederate leaders made was in underestimating the will of the South American people to remain free. The fighting was brutal and American soldiers hadn't died in such large number since the Civil War.
The costly victory in South America instilled an even deeper belief in Manifest Destiny. They now truly believed that they were on a divinely ordained quest for world domination.
Hard Times
By 1929, Mexico, Central America, South America, Haiti, and the Caribbean were all members of the growing Confederate empire. However, the quick expansion would cost even more. The Wall Street devastated the financial community. People lost entire fortunes over night. The nation retreated into isolationism in an attempt to solve its domestic woes. Eventually, the slave trade was renewed. Senator John Ambrose Fauntroy II launched thousands of processed slaves for assignment overseas. They were trained and ready for travel, whether it be southern Mexico or the Confederate islands. The C.S.A acted as middle-man in the new slave trade. Capturing and training slaves for export. Some slaves were chosen domestically, from the poor of their own country. But traditional African slaves were always preferred. The slave trade elevated the confederate States out of the Great Depression and it was made possible through the cooperation of African leaders who sold the "inferior tribes" and those with whom they had longstanding conflicts. Because of that cooperation, the C.S.A. allowed these African dictators to govern with interference.
In Europe, the rise of Nazi Germany was of little concern to the Confederate States and its isolationist foreign policy. Many C.S. leaders visited Germany and attended the mass Nazi rallies. Congress officially supported Germany's new Aryan racial policies, calling them "biologically correct." Hitler returned the visit in the Spring of 1935, touring the boroughs of New York City. Although protested by Jewish-Americans, the trip was a resounding success. In Washington, Hitler proposed that the C.S. join with him in a "Final Solution" to the "problem of inferior races." Hitler's plan was to exterminate the Jews of Europe and create a pure Aryan continent. Secretary of State, John Ambrose Fauntroy III, responded by suggesting that Germany not exterminate the Jews, but instead use them as a productive slave labor force. Taking Hitler on a tour of American slave labor plantations and factories, Fauntroy and Hitler discussed the possibilities. No agreement was reached, but Secretary Fauntroy made it clear that the C.S. felt it immoral to waste human livestock for a promise not to intervene any military conflict Germany had with its neighbors.
The C.S. did have a new enemy. Japan had become expansionist, assembling a large military force. For the C.S.A. they posed a threat to the entire Pacific region. The Confederate States would act. On the morning of December 7, 1941, the C.S. struck Japan in a devastating surprise attack. The air base on the Coral Islands, the Japanese naval fleet anchored in Tokyo Bay, and the former capital of Kyoto were all heavily damaged by Confederate bombers. The war with Japan had begun. Because the Japanese people were small in physical stature and non-white, Confederate leaders dismissed them as weak. Once again, they underestimated the will of a foreign power. So many men were dying in the war that Confederate leaders turned to their slaves for assistance. The first to volunteer were West Coast enslaved Japanese, anxious to prove their loyalty and perhaps gain their freedom. However, Congress decided that they were sneaky and could not be trusted. They were banned from service. A regiment of slaves, the 129th Fighting Bucks, were leased by their owners to the Confederate armed forces to serve in combat.
The slaves were promised their freedom if they would fight. The men of the 129th fought with distinction and courage, they were given the most dangerous missions and casualties were very high, but they earned the respect of their Confederate officers. Even after suffering such tremendous losses, the Japanese forces still would not surrender. Then the C.S. developed the atomic bomb and used it on Japan. After the war, the 129th Fighting Bucks were returned to their masters for enslavement. No explanation was given.
Happy Days
In 1950, the Confederate States were enjoying a period of domestic tranquility. Antebellum values were at the core of this peace. Slaves had been beaten into submission. The future was rich with promise. Then the Canadian-based John Brown Underground (the JBU), a splinter-group of the NAACP, waged what they called a "war against slavery." While the NAACP practiced non-violence, the JBU employed any means necessary. They committed acts of terrorism and were bent on the destruction of the Confederate States. The C.S.A. sent Ambassador Hamish Bond to visit Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. Bond demanded the extradition of all members of the JBU. Prime Minister St. Laurent refused. Canadian abolitionism had now become the major threat to the Confederate way of life.
To safeguard against "Red Canadian" aggression, the C.S. constructed a wall spanning the entire length of the Canadian border. Called the "Cotton Curtain", it is fortified and impregnable. Radio Free Confederacy sends broadcasts over the wall every day with the hope that slaves will hear the transmissions and gain information about their lives. The triumph of the Cotton Curtain would serve to increase violent attacks against the Confederate States. In 1957, John Ambrose Fauntroy IV was assassinated by the JBU. In response, the C.S. president launched air strikes against Canada.
After the neutrality of the C.S.A. during World War II, Britain and France joined other summit nations in calling for sanctions against the Confederate States. The summit nations imposed a world embargo against the C.S. and any notion of a war with Canada was dismissed. The C.S. retreated into isolation. As a result of the embargo, there was rationing. Only the nation of South Africa remained a loyal ally. The success of the embargo would leave many to quietly question, "Is it worth it?"
A New Frontier
When Republican John F. Kennedy was elected, slaves knew he was sympathetic to their plight. He could not come out and directly advocate its end, but everyone knew if the opportunity arose, Kennedy would emancipate. Kennedy, the youngest leader in American history and the first president from the North since the War of Northern Aggresion would dramatically alter the direction of the country. What Kennedy termed, "a new frontier." Polls indicated that only 29 percent of the population now favored slavery, the lowest figures ever. Kennedy had skilfully managed to put a handsome face on emancipation.
However, Kennedy, distracted by the Cold War with Canada and an expansionist campaign in Southeast Asia had little time to address the revolutionary social changes at home. Women now demanded an end to the sexual relations between their master husbands and their female slaves. For generations, they had tolerated these unions and the slave children they produced.
Fully fifty years after the efforts of Susan B. Anthony, women now wanted control over their lives. They demanded the right to vote. Confederate teenagers were being influenced by the beat of "negro rock 'n' roll" blasting across the Cotton Curtain from Canada. Free to express themselves, former slaves enriched Canadian culture. Performers like Elvis Presley imitated black artists and were censored and arrested. Many, like Presley, took their talents north and became stars in Canada. Canadian writers like Richard Wright and James Baldwin created master works of literature. The ban on race music, literature and art stifled American creativity. Prohibition of certain abolitionist and black inspired art left Confederate culture void and without conscience. American art never evolved beyond government inspired propaganda. Blacks, afforded equal education, excelled in all areas of Canadian life. In the world of sports, they helped Canada to consistently defeat the C.S. in the Olympic Games, winning hundreds of gold medals. After seeing great black athletes in the Olympics, some Confederates pondered the inclusion of slaves in sport. In the first annual CSFL championship game, two all-white teams illustrated the call to break the color barrier and emancipate.
However, President Kennedy's assassination drained the life blood from the entire nation. The belief some white citizens had for a new America was gone, women would not get the vote, and the hope slaves had for their freedom exploded into rage. Two major slave rebellions, one in the Los Angeles, California section of Watts and the other in Newark, New Jersey caused strong but divided reactions from Confederate lawmakers.
By the mid-1970s, the social revolution had been crushed. Most of the opposition leaders fled the country, went into hiding, or were killed. The nation was caught up in a malaise. Many feared the C.S. was crumbling from within and that the best years of the Confederate States of America were behind them.
Family Values
After sponsoring the popular Family Values Act, John Ambrose Fauntroy V was selected to head the Commerce Department. He would steer the family values initiative. Fauntroy utilized popular religious leaders in a series of infomercial, answering the nation's difficult moral questions. Fauntroy brought slave training out of the dark ages, utilizing the latest multimedia technology. Fauntroy's new agencies were designed to monitor and correct the American fabric.
The 1980s and the early 1990s were more than just a nostalgia trip. The people of the confederate States had finally put that decade of tragic doubt, the 1960s, behind them. There was huge patriotic fervor after the Persian Gulf War.
I have the movie on tape and wrote the described C.S.A history down in detail. Here it is:
The richest Americans were concentrated in the South. Cotton was America's number one export and that made southerners as well as northern textile mills very wealthy. So cotton was king. By 1860, a young prime field hand would sell for as much as a luxury car would in the late 1950s. American slaves represented more capital than any other asset in the entire nation. America was always a slave-based economy.
War and Rebellion
By January of 1861, most people in the American South believed the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln would terminate their ownership of black slaves. A provisional government was formed and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected President. In very little time, the Confederacy defined itself as an independent and sovereign nation.
Meanwhile the Union victory at Antietam gave President Lincoln the opportunity to make a revolutionary proclamation, the Emancipation Proclamation. However, the proclamation did not free a single slave. It was purely symbolic and used by Lincoln to frame the war in moral intent. President Davis countered so-called "emancipation" by sending Judah P. Benjamin to negotiate the military and financial involvement of the foreign powers Britain and France. Benjamin, a Jew and the South's most brilliant legal mind, defied anti-Semitic attitudes to become Secretary of State and President Davis's chief advisor.
Benjamin matched Lincoln by wisely promoting the southern cause of state's rights. Not as the preservation of slavery, but as the freedom of private property. Benjamin's gambit worked. Fighting for freedom, not slavery opened the avenue for Europe's entrance into the war. With the assistance of several divisions of British and French troops, Lee's armies at Gettysburg routed the Union forces. In a matter of months, Confederate troops tooked the nation's capitol, capturing the White House - but there was no sign of President Lincoln.
In a small house outside Washington, D.C. on April 9, 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant surrendered to General Robert E. Lee. The bloody conflict had finally ended. It became the primary objective of Confederate forces to locate and arrest the now deposed President Lincoln. Confederate forces were everywhere, so a desperate Lincoln turned to Harriet Tubman. She chose to disguise President Lincoln in black face and travel with him along one of her many secret slave routes. A crack battalion of Confederate troops was dispatched from Detroit to locate and arrest Lincoln and Tubman before they could escape into Canada. Lincoln and Tubman were captured trying to cross Lake Sinclair. President Abraham Lincoln was now a prisoner of the Confederate Army. Jefferson Davis, on learning of Lincoln's capture in black face, termed the arrest "symbolic."
A quick trial was convened and former President Lincoln was convicted of war crimes against the southern nation. He was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe near Norfolk, Virginia. It was from the window of his damp cell that he watched the execution of Harriet Tubman. There were many that were clamoring were Lincoln's execution also, but President Davis understood that sparing Lincoln's life would ease tensions in the North. After serving two years, a frail and gaunt Lincoln was granted a full pardon and exile to Canada. He never returned to his homeland. When he died in 1905, he was lonely and bitter man, disgraced, abandoned, and almost entirely forgotten by history. Today, he's only remembered as the man who lost the War of Northern Aggression.
Reconstruction
The victory of the Confederacy was cause for grand celebrations. Plantations throughout the South were the center of jubilant parties welcoming back the troops, returning them to a now blessed and trimphant way of life. With the stroke of a pen, President Davis annexed the United States. The symbols of the old government were removed and it became the Confederate States of America. Dixie, a former minstrel show tune written ironically by a northerner, replaced the national anthem. President Davis quickly left Richmond and moved the office of the presidency to Washington and the White House. But two problems would follow.
Confederate forces burned and pillaged several northern cities, such as New York City and Boston. The fate of millions of black slaves seemed settled when a surprising call from emancipation arised from Robert E. Lee. He said that, "Virginia and the South as a whole would fare better if she could get rid of negro population. They would be a cause of serious trouble in our attempt to hold them." Lee caused a firestorm of debate over what to do with the post-war slaves. A dashing freshman Congressman from Virginia would take the floor and establish himself as the leader of the pro-slavery position. It is said that John Ambrose Fauntroy could persuade any colleague from his position or charm any woman from her dress.
President Davis, approached the question from a practical point of view. Ironically, it was one of Davis's own slaves, named Poxy, who gave him the notion that would rejuvenate the institution of slavery. The Davis Plan took the form of an income tax designed to rebuild the north. Still, former Unionists did have another option. The entire tax, collected only from former Union citizens, could only be abated for the purchase of household or industrial slaves. To manage the plan, Davis selected Congressman John Ambrose Fauntroy.
Stray blacks, free and slave, children, the elderly, or anyone with dark skin who could not prove Caucasian ancestry were arrested and placed in cattle pens in most major Northern cities. Former southern owner traveled for hundreds of miles to sort through the thousands of black faces and claim their escaped property. Most perplexed about their fate under the plan were those of mixed racial background. A small number of so-called mulatto slave owners existed in South Carolina and other southern states. Formerly called "free men of color", under the Davis Plan, the one-drop statute constituted their inclusion and mixed race slave owners were sold right alongside their slaves. Abolitionists rallied to combat the Davis Plan.
However, northerners began to appreciate what southerners had always known - it's good to be the master. A secret meeting was held in the home of Susan B. Anthony to respond to the success of the Davis Plan. There William Lloyd Garrison read his now famous letter, "Why We Must Leave." About 20,000 whites, mostly northerners, followed Garrison across the border, to Canada. Among the notable expatriots were Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the outspoken Wendell Phillips. Another to leave was the suffragette, Susan B. Anthony. She would lead a women's movement in Canada, gaining the vote for women in 1912.
One particular incident that got the eye of the country was the matter of Cassy Brown in 1875. Cassy was a slave woman who murdered the three white children in her charge and escaped. She was never captured. For the first time, people began to worry, could they trust "their black mammy." Slave owners left befuddled at the behavior of their slaves, turned to Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright of the University of Louisiana. He was a highly respected and widely published member of the American Medical Association. Cartwright considered an expert on "negro diseases and peculiarities", had made a major breakthrough with his discovery of drapetomania. Drapetomania is a disease which causes slaves to run away, it's taken from the Latin drapeto (meaning to flee) and mania (an obsession). Thus, Dr. Cartwright believed drapetomania to be the root cause of all runaways. Amazingly, his research would influence an entire generation of medical thought.
John Ambrose Fauntroy, who many call "the father of modern slavery", received the Democratic presidential nomination in 1880, but suffered a debilitating stroke weeks later. He died in 1882. The Fauntroy family would capture the imagination of the nation for years to come. A political dynasty, many consider the talented family to be American royalty.
Birth of a Nation
While the Davis Plan rebuilt the cities, a psychological reconstruction would be instrumental in giving birth to a new nation. Confederate leaders knew it was necessary to reconstruct the minds of its slaves and citizens. This would be what some call, "The American Holocaust." Reconstruction would see to it that moral authority was reestablished. Many called it "gentle reminder." A great many blacks were lynched during this period. Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison responded to these horrors by organizing fugitive slaves, free blacks, Canadians, and former U.S. citizens into a new organization, the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Chattel People.
A Confederate delegation met with Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald and demanded the immediate return of all "negro property" within the Canadian territory. These were the darkest days since the overturning of emancipation. In the final hour, Frederick Douglas was called before Parliament to speak. The oratory of Douglas swayed the needed votes against deportation. However, the executions and tortures had scared most slaves into submission. Until the very end, unti his death in 1895, Douglas fought against slavery in the former United States.
Confederate reconstruction efforts were curtailed by the ongoing conflict with the Plains Indians. Land hungry pioneers, gold prospectors and expanding railroads that the government wanted to be moved from the South into the Great Plains meant that the Indians had to be removed. They took their children from them. Indian children were forcibly removed and sent to "boarding schools" that were nothing more than total institutions for the eradication of their native heritage and pride. The Plains Indians Wars would last nearly thirty years. By 1890, the last Indian nation had been defeated by the confederate cavalry.
In California, thousands of Chinese immigrants were employed as cheap labor constructing the nations new railroad system. They were caught completely off guard when Congress passed the Yellow Peril Mandate. Government agents simply told West Coast employers that the Chinese workers that they employed, they now owned. What had been cheap labor now became slave labor. One might have thought that the proclamation of that mandate would have effectively halted the influx of workers from Asia, but they kept coming, still believing that jobs and good futures were waiting for them. But that mandate effectively changed the face of West Coast slavery from black to yellow.
Fearfull of further non-white immigration, influential clergyman and author, Reverend Claymore Penn Holmes of New York urged Congress to ensure that the Confederate States would remain a Christian nation. The Christian Reform Act of 1895 outlawed any religion not based on Christianity. After much debate, it was decided that the Catholic Church would be considered Christian, but the Jews would be asked to leave. As Jefferson Davis lay on his death bed, he literally pleaded with Congress to revoke the Act and remined them of the gallant work of the Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin and other Jews who had supported the Confederacy. John Ambrose Fauntroy II, visited Davis and told the former president that the nation would "be better off without those blood sucking Jews." Davis reached out with a frail hand and grabbed Fauntroy by the collar and hissed, "Don't you ever forget sir, that it was a blood sucking Jew who saved this country." The death of Davis did create a provision allowing a small number of Jews to remain on the reservation on Long Island.
While blacks were gaining political support in Canada, in the C.S.A. North/South relations were being romanticized. The once bloody civil war had become civil. Novelist during reconstruction mended the divide between the two regions. In their books, the aims and causes of the war suddenly changed. Slavery was no longer mentioned as the cause of the Civil War. This was key to reconciliation. Thus, the suffering of slaves was ignored. Stories presented only loyal black servants. However, the courage and sacrifice of whites on both sides of the Maxon-Dixon Line was romantically examined. They struggle to survive, they protect their homes and families, generals in battlefields take on a new flare, the smallest details became dramatically important. In best sellers like "My Union Soldier" and "Of Bells and Blue," southerners are taught to pity the North, to cry for the lost cause of the Union, the misguided attempt to free the slaves. Northerners are presented as a valiant people who onced ruled a mighty land that simply lost its way.
A Tropical Empire
With reconstruction complete, the C.S.A., inspired by the empires of Britain and France, were anxious to embark on a journey to become the most powerful empire in the world.
In the summer of 1900, Confederate framers acted on their vision of a lush and productive superstate. They would civilize the savage regions of the Southern Hemisphere. It was called "a splendid little war" but it really became the first opportunity to test North/South unity. The war was a rousing success. With decisive victories against the Spanish in Cuba and in the Caribbean, the expansion continued into Mexico. These Latin American countries as confederate satellites were organized along grand antebellum lines with slave-based plantation economies. Only white people could hold black slaves, but in Mexico the Mexicans themselves were never subjected to slavery as such. There they had a system that was implement which separated the Mexican people from the white Americans who now ruled the country. This system of apartness effectively created two worlds, one white and the other Mexican. Separate and unequal. The system did have the advantage of allowing the Mexicans the convenience of knowing their place and staying in it. Like Britain and France, the Confederate States used existing divisions in South America, overturning democratically elected leaders and seizing power. Brazil turned against Argentina, Chile against Bolivia, and so on. It was simply divide and conquer.
Confederate leadership saw the conquest of South America as its prize piece. Conquering a huge landmass would make it a true empire. The new C.S. leadership in the Latin American countries believed in controlling the stomach as well as the mind. For breakfast, the Latin American diet became grits and sausage. For dinner, hamhocks and collard greens. A sandwich for lunch and a pickled pig's foot. The critical mistake confederate leaders made was in underestimating the will of the South American people to remain free. The fighting was brutal and American soldiers hadn't died in such large number since the Civil War.
The costly victory in South America instilled an even deeper belief in Manifest Destiny. They now truly believed that they were on a divinely ordained quest for world domination.
Hard Times
By 1929, Mexico, Central America, South America, Haiti, and the Caribbean were all members of the growing Confederate empire. However, the quick expansion would cost even more. The Wall Street devastated the financial community. People lost entire fortunes over night. The nation retreated into isolationism in an attempt to solve its domestic woes. Eventually, the slave trade was renewed. Senator John Ambrose Fauntroy II launched thousands of processed slaves for assignment overseas. They were trained and ready for travel, whether it be southern Mexico or the Confederate islands. The C.S.A acted as middle-man in the new slave trade. Capturing and training slaves for export. Some slaves were chosen domestically, from the poor of their own country. But traditional African slaves were always preferred. The slave trade elevated the confederate States out of the Great Depression and it was made possible through the cooperation of African leaders who sold the "inferior tribes" and those with whom they had longstanding conflicts. Because of that cooperation, the C.S.A. allowed these African dictators to govern with interference.
In Europe, the rise of Nazi Germany was of little concern to the Confederate States and its isolationist foreign policy. Many C.S. leaders visited Germany and attended the mass Nazi rallies. Congress officially supported Germany's new Aryan racial policies, calling them "biologically correct." Hitler returned the visit in the Spring of 1935, touring the boroughs of New York City. Although protested by Jewish-Americans, the trip was a resounding success. In Washington, Hitler proposed that the C.S. join with him in a "Final Solution" to the "problem of inferior races." Hitler's plan was to exterminate the Jews of Europe and create a pure Aryan continent. Secretary of State, John Ambrose Fauntroy III, responded by suggesting that Germany not exterminate the Jews, but instead use them as a productive slave labor force. Taking Hitler on a tour of American slave labor plantations and factories, Fauntroy and Hitler discussed the possibilities. No agreement was reached, but Secretary Fauntroy made it clear that the C.S. felt it immoral to waste human livestock for a promise not to intervene any military conflict Germany had with its neighbors.
The C.S. did have a new enemy. Japan had become expansionist, assembling a large military force. For the C.S.A. they posed a threat to the entire Pacific region. The Confederate States would act. On the morning of December 7, 1941, the C.S. struck Japan in a devastating surprise attack. The air base on the Coral Islands, the Japanese naval fleet anchored in Tokyo Bay, and the former capital of Kyoto were all heavily damaged by Confederate bombers. The war with Japan had begun. Because the Japanese people were small in physical stature and non-white, Confederate leaders dismissed them as weak. Once again, they underestimated the will of a foreign power. So many men were dying in the war that Confederate leaders turned to their slaves for assistance. The first to volunteer were West Coast enslaved Japanese, anxious to prove their loyalty and perhaps gain their freedom. However, Congress decided that they were sneaky and could not be trusted. They were banned from service. A regiment of slaves, the 129th Fighting Bucks, were leased by their owners to the Confederate armed forces to serve in combat.
The slaves were promised their freedom if they would fight. The men of the 129th fought with distinction and courage, they were given the most dangerous missions and casualties were very high, but they earned the respect of their Confederate officers. Even after suffering such tremendous losses, the Japanese forces still would not surrender. Then the C.S. developed the atomic bomb and used it on Japan. After the war, the 129th Fighting Bucks were returned to their masters for enslavement. No explanation was given.
Happy Days
In 1950, the Confederate States were enjoying a period of domestic tranquility. Antebellum values were at the core of this peace. Slaves had been beaten into submission. The future was rich with promise. Then the Canadian-based John Brown Underground (the JBU), a splinter-group of the NAACP, waged what they called a "war against slavery." While the NAACP practiced non-violence, the JBU employed any means necessary. They committed acts of terrorism and were bent on the destruction of the Confederate States. The C.S.A. sent Ambassador Hamish Bond to visit Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. Bond demanded the extradition of all members of the JBU. Prime Minister St. Laurent refused. Canadian abolitionism had now become the major threat to the Confederate way of life.
To safeguard against "Red Canadian" aggression, the C.S. constructed a wall spanning the entire length of the Canadian border. Called the "Cotton Curtain", it is fortified and impregnable. Radio Free Confederacy sends broadcasts over the wall every day with the hope that slaves will hear the transmissions and gain information about their lives. The triumph of the Cotton Curtain would serve to increase violent attacks against the Confederate States. In 1957, John Ambrose Fauntroy IV was assassinated by the JBU. In response, the C.S. president launched air strikes against Canada.
After the neutrality of the C.S.A. during World War II, Britain and France joined other summit nations in calling for sanctions against the Confederate States. The summit nations imposed a world embargo against the C.S. and any notion of a war with Canada was dismissed. The C.S. retreated into isolation. As a result of the embargo, there was rationing. Only the nation of South Africa remained a loyal ally. The success of the embargo would leave many to quietly question, "Is it worth it?"
A New Frontier
When Republican John F. Kennedy was elected, slaves knew he was sympathetic to their plight. He could not come out and directly advocate its end, but everyone knew if the opportunity arose, Kennedy would emancipate. Kennedy, the youngest leader in American history and the first president from the North since the War of Northern Aggresion would dramatically alter the direction of the country. What Kennedy termed, "a new frontier." Polls indicated that only 29 percent of the population now favored slavery, the lowest figures ever. Kennedy had skilfully managed to put a handsome face on emancipation.
However, Kennedy, distracted by the Cold War with Canada and an expansionist campaign in Southeast Asia had little time to address the revolutionary social changes at home. Women now demanded an end to the sexual relations between their master husbands and their female slaves. For generations, they had tolerated these unions and the slave children they produced.
Fully fifty years after the efforts of Susan B. Anthony, women now wanted control over their lives. They demanded the right to vote. Confederate teenagers were being influenced by the beat of "negro rock 'n' roll" blasting across the Cotton Curtain from Canada. Free to express themselves, former slaves enriched Canadian culture. Performers like Elvis Presley imitated black artists and were censored and arrested. Many, like Presley, took their talents north and became stars in Canada. Canadian writers like Richard Wright and James Baldwin created master works of literature. The ban on race music, literature and art stifled American creativity. Prohibition of certain abolitionist and black inspired art left Confederate culture void and without conscience. American art never evolved beyond government inspired propaganda. Blacks, afforded equal education, excelled in all areas of Canadian life. In the world of sports, they helped Canada to consistently defeat the C.S. in the Olympic Games, winning hundreds of gold medals. After seeing great black athletes in the Olympics, some Confederates pondered the inclusion of slaves in sport. In the first annual CSFL championship game, two all-white teams illustrated the call to break the color barrier and emancipate.
However, President Kennedy's assassination drained the life blood from the entire nation. The belief some white citizens had for a new America was gone, women would not get the vote, and the hope slaves had for their freedom exploded into rage. Two major slave rebellions, one in the Los Angeles, California section of Watts and the other in Newark, New Jersey caused strong but divided reactions from Confederate lawmakers.
By the mid-1970s, the social revolution had been crushed. Most of the opposition leaders fled the country, went into hiding, or were killed. The nation was caught up in a malaise. Many feared the C.S. was crumbling from within and that the best years of the Confederate States of America were behind them.
Family Values
After sponsoring the popular Family Values Act, John Ambrose Fauntroy V was selected to head the Commerce Department. He would steer the family values initiative. Fauntroy utilized popular religious leaders in a series of infomercial, answering the nation's difficult moral questions. Fauntroy brought slave training out of the dark ages, utilizing the latest multimedia technology. Fauntroy's new agencies were designed to monitor and correct the American fabric.
The 1980s and the early 1990s were more than just a nostalgia trip. The people of the confederate States had finally put that decade of tragic doubt, the 1960s, behind them. There was huge patriotic fervor after the Persian Gulf War.
